Thank you for the post. You are right about Harris and her matriarchy, but it was even worse than that: the Democrats stated, right on their website, that they served women, but not men. This wasn't just the Harris campaign, but policies that went back to Obama. Batya Ungar-Sargon breaks that down in this short video:
I like this post a lot and am moved by it; even though I basically don't agree with it (IMO if Trump is daddy we're completely fucked)I still I feel its emotional power. I hesitated to respond because it evokes so many thoughts and feelings that I'm afraid I'll sound confused. But finally I wanted to let you know how much it affected me. To start, I actually don't believe we recently lived in a patriarchy (or now live in a matriarchy); how can we say "patriarchy" when women can vote, run for office and hold positions of power? How can we say "matriarchy" when men still do hold the dominant place in terms of income, and seats in the house and senate? But where I agree: its true that, culturally, masculinity has been demonized and insulted in a destructive and ridiculous way. Masculinity is beautiful and yes, as you say "life-giving." Sometimes it can take an ugly and cruel form but so can femininity (which is beautiful too). I have also come to think that feminism really has had some "unintended consequences." However, if the traditional home you describe had been so ideal for most people I don't think that feminism would have been able to succeed in "pushing choice on women [sic]". If your traditional home was wonderful for you I see why you think as you do--and it does sound wonderful. But I didn't experience that and neither did thousands, probably millions of others. In fact my mom was the more stable one and my father the one with wild fears, who flew off the handle and terrorized us waving around weapons. I don't say that to disparage him, he had PTSD from enduring the Anzio beachhead and other horrors, after being orphaned twice at a young age. He was a delicate person and a profoundly honorable one--like your father was. And he did his best, he provided for us even when he suffered. But my mother could not deal with his instability; she felt trapped and bitterly warned us against getting married without having your own money. The recipe for happiness now seems to be to get married early and start having kids--well my parents did that and you could not find two more unhappy people. I saw much too much of that growing up, and plainly so did a lot of other women or feminism would never have gained so much strength. But in fact feminism was never so strong you could not just ignore it. So I don't really get people saying it "ruined" their lives, why didn't they do as they wanted? I am even older than you and left home early so I was around a lot of girls who "hooked up" constantly (though we didn't call it that) and who often had feminist ideas (though such ideas were certainly more gentle then) but most of them wound up partnered and with children. I agree with you that a lot has gone terribly wrong. But I don't think an ideal "patriarchy" or "matriarchy" is going to fix it. I don't think there is any ideal solution. I think part of this country's problem is wanting an ideal solution of some kind. But I loved your post for its passion and desire for something good. I hope you find it.
Thank you for reading and responding. I have so much to say in response to your response! One thing you touch on, which I've considered, is what I mean by 'patriarchy' and 'matriarchy.' It might boil down to conservative/traditional versus anything goes. An online dictionary defines 'patriarchy' as men running things and leaving women out, which seems to me a political definition. In 'patriarchal times' women ran a domain, and men ran a domain. The roles were defined. Now women vie to run the men's domain, with the previous women's domain treated like an afterthought.
When I try to discuss the unintended consequences of feminism, people usually bring up credit cards and bank accounts -- no one is suggesting reversing course that far, or reversing course at all. But the narrative could use a serious overhaul.
You wrote me a long message about a month or so ago, in response to my comments on one of your posts. I've meant to respond, but I've been wrapping up a novel -- long overdue -- which touches on some of these issues. (It's called SEXODUS). My family, too, wasn't perfect. I'm going to respond to your messages -- and this in more detail -- soon. I very much appreciate your comment -- it sparks other thoughts I've had on how to extend the Requiem into a book. The next installment would provide current definitions of what 'patriarchy' and 'matriarchy' have come to mean.
By the way, have you read or heard about Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution? Mary Harrington's Feminism Against Progress? These are the books I'd have written if not condemned to teaching a bottom feeder, time consuming, art-killing subject at two colleges...now down to one college, syllabus due tomorrow.
"An online dictionary defines 'patriarchy' as men running things and leaving women out, which seems to me a political definition. In 'patriarchal times' women ran a domain, and men ran a domain."
Yes, that online definition seems simplistic and much too broad. Re: the separate domains, that is an interesting subject and more complex than we usually acknowledge. My favorite feminist was Germaine Greer, an iconoclastic nut but a very interesting one. Decades ago I heard her interviewed on NPR about going to an Arabic country for some kind of research: she was expecting to be horrified by their grossly sexist bigamist culture but found herself surprised instead by how well it worked. She said exactly what you said, that men and women existed separately, and that while women's realm was restricted, within that realm they were respected and even had real power. First wives did not resent second and third wives because it meant they got a break from the husband's sexual needs and also they got to tell the other wives what to do! (I'm sure this is the ideal version, I can't believe that there wasn't human conflict of all kinds going on but that's going to happen no matter what.). She said a big difference between them and us was that they did not expect spouses to be everything to each other, that the sexes came together in order to raise families and ideally love each other but respect was more important. She was not advocating for that way of doing things, she thought it would be impossible for Westerners. But she said she was surprised to find that it made sense to her.
It makes sense to me too in a general way but there are always going to be some women for whom traditional arrangements would be horrible and I am one of them. I don't want to compete with men but if I were living a two hundred years ago it would've been hard for me to become a writer or to get a fair shake as one even if some sympathetic man decided to give me a shot at publication. Sexism is real and in the past could be vicious. And I'm in a "soft" artistic field. I've never wanted to be in the military or business, but I feel like women should be able to if they want--do you think they are competing with men or just following their innate desires?
I've heard of the Louise Perry book (Mary Harrington only vaguely) and heard a few discussions of it. I didn't read it but probably should have, it would've been a perfect SStack subject for me. Off the top of my head my reaction is that the sexual revolution was bad for some people and good for others. I would say it was good for me for personal and circumstantial reasons that I dont' want to list here--but really I felt like it saved my life.
I understand the nature of teaching + writing so take your time to respond. There is too much to say really for comments, glad you are writing a book.
Mary Gaitskill (https://marygaitskill.substack.com/) is the best female writer I've read in terms of accessing male thoughts. Plenty of great female writers (Alice Munro, Muriel Spark, many others) write realistic men, but Mary Gaitskill seems to be in a class of her own.
Well if its any encouragement for the longest time I thought you were male based on your voice in my comment section. Though I think some of that was for a dopey reason, your choice of name!
I have devoted my life to motherhood and I am very angry about a world continuously trying to gaslight me that I must be unhappy when I’m not.
I don’t have the sensitivities of someone who is childless because my experience is so different, but I cannot abide by the ubiquitous drumbeat of antinatalism. It is literally everywhere.
Two examples.
We visited Versailles and listened to a wonderful tour. A good chunk of it was about how the queen was stuck being pregnant and poor her. I can’t tell you how much of it. It was a great tour and the woman was lovely but it made me cringe to hear it.
The other was an article about menopause- which talked about how women are so relieved not to be able to get pregnant anymore- it didn’t mention that some women might see that as a bad thing, though it did find the need to mention that some women at menopause decide that they’re lesbians. Which I imagine is a minority. Just guessing.
Good piece. Excellent point about daddy returning home from the job 'making the family whole'.
The U.S. has been a matriarchy -- a gynocracy -- for many decades now. Donald Trump is not going to change that, though I wish elsewise. He is an Eighties Liberal and a feminist, with a feminist daughter and wife who greatly influence him.
I'm old enough to remember the Before Years, the Fifties and Sixties before feminism conquered the culture. An average working man COULD afford that house in the picture. That's all gone now. Women rule.
So are millennial women finally waking up to what men have known for millennia that work sucks? You weren’t all going to be glamorous lawyers journalists and architects and that mid level corpo jobs quickly run out of growth? If you ain’t doing that for your family why the fuck would you do it? You were promised meaning and success through work. Men knew, know, and will always know that is henerallly bullshit. The people for whom that’s true are psychopaths.
I'm a boomer, and I woke up long ago. The millennial women I work with don't seem to have woken up, though. I was just on a boat with a 40-year-old school counselor who was adamant about choosing a career over motherhood. She was spitting mad over the 'parental leave' that will be taken out of her paycheck, given she isn't going to become a parent. I suggested changing the title to 'paid family leave' for when her mother is infirm and needs someone to take care of her.
boomer here as well, and we were the heroic women breaking ceilings--I was one of the few newly-minted female PhDs and very much "in demand." It was only later, after I had put off children, that I began to grow impatient with the narrative. And after my kids went directly into childcare (something I mention in my big foot piece) I I first wondered about and then recognized the great "juggling" act didn't really allow for family life.
This is a fascinating and alien perspective to me. An earlier discussion with you prompted me to go online and see if women really were unhappy to be childless. I was surprised at what I found. There are Reddit posts galore of happy, childless women living their best lives. When asked if women are unhappy about being childless, the posts I found are overwhelmingly from childless women happy to be so. Many of them are our age.
My mother and father were devoted to each other, and raised three children. My wife’s mother and father were devoted to each other and raised four children. Their offspring raised 14 grandchildren. On my wife’s side, the nine grandchildren are in the midst of a baby boom with nine great grandchildren. Three of those are my daughter’s. Those who are not yet married are clearly on the path to becoming so, and most will probably bear children.
Even among the many people I worked with over my career, most were married with children. Families A, B, and C are just not common in my personal experience. Most of our friends and acquaintances have children, and they have been welcoming their own grandchildren into the fold for years now.
Your path has obviously been much different than mine, and I appreciate your soul-bearing description of your own experience. You have a gift of being able to express yourself in a way I can feel it. Thank you. And yes, Daddy is home, but in four years I fear mommy is going to leave him for an alcoholic wife beater who is fabulous in bed. It’s the great circle of life.
Thanks for reading, and for your response. I wonder whether you live in a place where religion holds more sway. It seems that divorce has become a default for when things get rough, rather than seeing the way through, across the country, unless influenced by a church congregation, where the divorced couple would have to navigate a separation within this proxy religious 'family.'
The broken homes, divorces, and children adopted from other countries fill my 'world.' I recall, in the free-wheeling 80s, that most of the women I worked with were utterly miserable because the rules and objectives of dating had been thrown out.
However, if I were to take a survey on how I feel about being childless, it might come out that I'm "happy." I accept my fate; I have made the best of it; I have a lot of freedom. I also spend holidays alone, will miss out on being a grandparent, and so on. What you don't experience, perhaps you don't miss, and I would also suggest that there's a sunk cost fallacy in operation on Reddit, like the people who've destroyed their bodies with 'transgender' surgeries insisting that they are 'happy.' What does 'happy' even mean?
Interestingly enough, I keep running into information that women are less happy, perhaps because when I began to realize that feminism had led me off a cliff, I started reading anything that would confirm that....here's an example. Again -- thank you for reading. I appreciate your response!
While I was raised in a Christian home, faith wasn’t really a central focus of our lives. I went to church most Sundays, and had years of Sunday school prior to the service. Dad got to stay home, which I didn’t think was fair. Dad used to sing “It Ain’t Necessarily So” from Porgy and Bess. He was also a firm believer in evolution, and taught me the history of creation through that lens. I always felt like I was just talking to myself when I prayed, and it wasn’t until I was in college that I realized I was a true agnostic. I don’t think it was religion that shaped my beliefs on marriage so much as it was the internalization of what I witnessed in my parents and other married couples in our circle. I did like what our religion had to say about marriage, and I liked the idea that what God hath joined together let no man put asunder, regardless of whether there was truly a God or not.
I don’t recall seeing a lot of divorces around me growing up. I didn’t know a lot of peers with divorced parents. We lived in small towns, and perhaps divorce is less prevalent in a small town than it is in urban areas. Maybe a big part of the magic is dumb luck. How did I wind up married to a woman who seems such a perfect complement to me? Why is our bond so strong? Why do we still enjoy each other’s company after all these decades? Whatever it is, it isn’t the church per se as we don't attend one. But I can't deny that our early exposure to religious principles had some influence.
You are right that we tend to search for information that confirms our biases. I’m as guilty of that as the next person. I was looking to confirm my belief that women who were never married and had children are not as happy as those who are married and did, and what I found was that the story is complicated. I have no idea if I would have been happier had my wife and I never had children. We certainly would have lived a life of plenty. All I know is that right now I am extremely happy and have no regrets, and I look forward to sailing into incontinence and senescence with my best friend and the love of my life. I have very much enjoyed our conversation, so thank you for responding!
Yes. I found myself voting, in essence, for the restoration of masculinity. I work in a female-dominated area (academia) where hysteria and neuroticism are driving forces, and worse, beliefs in things that simply aren't true. I'm working on the next installment, an analogy found in a 1962 film on how men need to lead us out of this civilizational disaster.
We seem to have come of age at a similar time and within families exhibiting similar dynamics! I'm a retired academic with two grown children. And yes, I came from a family that leaned Left, and I was propagandized toward two children.
Likewise, I've been reflecting on how feminism shaped the choices I made, and I especially appreciate your clarity and honesty! --would love to get your response to my first attempt at grappling with this, one that centers on my big feet, lol.
Thanks for reading, and for your comment. It's good to hear that you had children in spite of the messaging. As a lower tier academic (I teach English Language, with much time devoted to grading essays) I have often wondered how I would have had any time for family around how much of my time work has consumed -- and just getting by.
I'm happy to respond to your first attempt -- keep me posted.
Thank you for the post. You are right about Harris and her matriarchy, but it was even worse than that: the Democrats stated, right on their website, that they served women, but not men. This wasn't just the Harris campaign, but policies that went back to Obama. Batya Ungar-Sargon breaks that down in this short video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvyNLOWxfIU
Wow — she even directly states that more men are pro-life, while more women are pro abortion (which equals death).
I like this post a lot and am moved by it; even though I basically don't agree with it (IMO if Trump is daddy we're completely fucked)I still I feel its emotional power. I hesitated to respond because it evokes so many thoughts and feelings that I'm afraid I'll sound confused. But finally I wanted to let you know how much it affected me. To start, I actually don't believe we recently lived in a patriarchy (or now live in a matriarchy); how can we say "patriarchy" when women can vote, run for office and hold positions of power? How can we say "matriarchy" when men still do hold the dominant place in terms of income, and seats in the house and senate? But where I agree: its true that, culturally, masculinity has been demonized and insulted in a destructive and ridiculous way. Masculinity is beautiful and yes, as you say "life-giving." Sometimes it can take an ugly and cruel form but so can femininity (which is beautiful too). I have also come to think that feminism really has had some "unintended consequences." However, if the traditional home you describe had been so ideal for most people I don't think that feminism would have been able to succeed in "pushing choice on women [sic]". If your traditional home was wonderful for you I see why you think as you do--and it does sound wonderful. But I didn't experience that and neither did thousands, probably millions of others. In fact my mom was the more stable one and my father the one with wild fears, who flew off the handle and terrorized us waving around weapons. I don't say that to disparage him, he had PTSD from enduring the Anzio beachhead and other horrors, after being orphaned twice at a young age. He was a delicate person and a profoundly honorable one--like your father was. And he did his best, he provided for us even when he suffered. But my mother could not deal with his instability; she felt trapped and bitterly warned us against getting married without having your own money. The recipe for happiness now seems to be to get married early and start having kids--well my parents did that and you could not find two more unhappy people. I saw much too much of that growing up, and plainly so did a lot of other women or feminism would never have gained so much strength. But in fact feminism was never so strong you could not just ignore it. So I don't really get people saying it "ruined" their lives, why didn't they do as they wanted? I am even older than you and left home early so I was around a lot of girls who "hooked up" constantly (though we didn't call it that) and who often had feminist ideas (though such ideas were certainly more gentle then) but most of them wound up partnered and with children. I agree with you that a lot has gone terribly wrong. But I don't think an ideal "patriarchy" or "matriarchy" is going to fix it. I don't think there is any ideal solution. I think part of this country's problem is wanting an ideal solution of some kind. But I loved your post for its passion and desire for something good. I hope you find it.
Thank you for reading and responding. I have so much to say in response to your response! One thing you touch on, which I've considered, is what I mean by 'patriarchy' and 'matriarchy.' It might boil down to conservative/traditional versus anything goes. An online dictionary defines 'patriarchy' as men running things and leaving women out, which seems to me a political definition. In 'patriarchal times' women ran a domain, and men ran a domain. The roles were defined. Now women vie to run the men's domain, with the previous women's domain treated like an afterthought.
When I try to discuss the unintended consequences of feminism, people usually bring up credit cards and bank accounts -- no one is suggesting reversing course that far, or reversing course at all. But the narrative could use a serious overhaul.
You wrote me a long message about a month or so ago, in response to my comments on one of your posts. I've meant to respond, but I've been wrapping up a novel -- long overdue -- which touches on some of these issues. (It's called SEXODUS). My family, too, wasn't perfect. I'm going to respond to your messages -- and this in more detail -- soon. I very much appreciate your comment -- it sparks other thoughts I've had on how to extend the Requiem into a book. The next installment would provide current definitions of what 'patriarchy' and 'matriarchy' have come to mean.
By the way, have you read or heard about Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution? Mary Harrington's Feminism Against Progress? These are the books I'd have written if not condemned to teaching a bottom feeder, time consuming, art-killing subject at two colleges...now down to one college, syllabus due tomorrow.
"An online dictionary defines 'patriarchy' as men running things and leaving women out, which seems to me a political definition. In 'patriarchal times' women ran a domain, and men ran a domain."
Yes, that online definition seems simplistic and much too broad. Re: the separate domains, that is an interesting subject and more complex than we usually acknowledge. My favorite feminist was Germaine Greer, an iconoclastic nut but a very interesting one. Decades ago I heard her interviewed on NPR about going to an Arabic country for some kind of research: she was expecting to be horrified by their grossly sexist bigamist culture but found herself surprised instead by how well it worked. She said exactly what you said, that men and women existed separately, and that while women's realm was restricted, within that realm they were respected and even had real power. First wives did not resent second and third wives because it meant they got a break from the husband's sexual needs and also they got to tell the other wives what to do! (I'm sure this is the ideal version, I can't believe that there wasn't human conflict of all kinds going on but that's going to happen no matter what.). She said a big difference between them and us was that they did not expect spouses to be everything to each other, that the sexes came together in order to raise families and ideally love each other but respect was more important. She was not advocating for that way of doing things, she thought it would be impossible for Westerners. But she said she was surprised to find that it made sense to her.
It makes sense to me too in a general way but there are always going to be some women for whom traditional arrangements would be horrible and I am one of them. I don't want to compete with men but if I were living a two hundred years ago it would've been hard for me to become a writer or to get a fair shake as one even if some sympathetic man decided to give me a shot at publication. Sexism is real and in the past could be vicious. And I'm in a "soft" artistic field. I've never wanted to be in the military or business, but I feel like women should be able to if they want--do you think they are competing with men or just following their innate desires?
I've heard of the Louise Perry book (Mary Harrington only vaguely) and heard a few discussions of it. I didn't read it but probably should have, it would've been a perfect SStack subject for me. Off the top of my head my reaction is that the sexual revolution was bad for some people and good for others. I would say it was good for me for personal and circumstantial reasons that I dont' want to list here--but really I felt like it saved my life.
I understand the nature of teaching + writing so take your time to respond. There is too much to say really for comments, glad you are writing a book.
I saw this comment on a review of Sally Rooney's Intermezzo at the new Metropolitan Review, and thought you might appreciate it!
https://open.substack.com/pub/metropolitanreview/p/summers-gone?r=eo3qf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
dms
2d
Mary Gaitskill (https://marygaitskill.substack.com/) is the best female writer I've read in terms of accessing male thoughts. Plenty of great female writers (Alice Munro, Muriel Spark, many others) write realistic men, but Mary Gaitskill seems to be in a class of her own.
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Reply
Thank you for pointing that out! I hope you are doing okay with the teaching.
My pleasure!
Teaching has taken a glorious backseat to finishing the umpteenth and final draft of a novel (Sexodus). I hope I'm writing the male dialogue well...
Well if its any encouragement for the longest time I thought you were male based on your voice in my comment section. Though I think some of that was for a dopey reason, your choice of name!
I have devoted my life to motherhood and I am very angry about a world continuously trying to gaslight me that I must be unhappy when I’m not.
I don’t have the sensitivities of someone who is childless because my experience is so different, but I cannot abide by the ubiquitous drumbeat of antinatalism. It is literally everywhere.
Two examples.
We visited Versailles and listened to a wonderful tour. A good chunk of it was about how the queen was stuck being pregnant and poor her. I can’t tell you how much of it. It was a great tour and the woman was lovely but it made me cringe to hear it.
The other was an article about menopause- which talked about how women are so relieved not to be able to get pregnant anymore- it didn’t mention that some women might see that as a bad thing, though it did find the need to mention that some women at menopause decide that they’re lesbians. Which I imagine is a minority. Just guessing.
🤚 Proud member of the Patriarchy.
Good piece. Excellent point about daddy returning home from the job 'making the family whole'.
The U.S. has been a matriarchy -- a gynocracy -- for many decades now. Donald Trump is not going to change that, though I wish elsewise. He is an Eighties Liberal and a feminist, with a feminist daughter and wife who greatly influence him.
I'm old enough to remember the Before Years, the Fifties and Sixties before feminism conquered the culture. An average working man COULD afford that house in the picture. That's all gone now. Women rule.
So are millennial women finally waking up to what men have known for millennia that work sucks? You weren’t all going to be glamorous lawyers journalists and architects and that mid level corpo jobs quickly run out of growth? If you ain’t doing that for your family why the fuck would you do it? You were promised meaning and success through work. Men knew, know, and will always know that is henerallly bullshit. The people for whom that’s true are psychopaths.
I'm a boomer, and I woke up long ago. The millennial women I work with don't seem to have woken up, though. I was just on a boat with a 40-year-old school counselor who was adamant about choosing a career over motherhood. She was spitting mad over the 'parental leave' that will be taken out of her paycheck, given she isn't going to become a parent. I suggested changing the title to 'paid family leave' for when her mother is infirm and needs someone to take care of her.
boomer here as well, and we were the heroic women breaking ceilings--I was one of the few newly-minted female PhDs and very much "in demand." It was only later, after I had put off children, that I began to grow impatient with the narrative. And after my kids went directly into childcare (something I mention in my big foot piece) I I first wondered about and then recognized the great "juggling" act didn't really allow for family life.
This is a fascinating and alien perspective to me. An earlier discussion with you prompted me to go online and see if women really were unhappy to be childless. I was surprised at what I found. There are Reddit posts galore of happy, childless women living their best lives. When asked if women are unhappy about being childless, the posts I found are overwhelmingly from childless women happy to be so. Many of them are our age.
My mother and father were devoted to each other, and raised three children. My wife’s mother and father were devoted to each other and raised four children. Their offspring raised 14 grandchildren. On my wife’s side, the nine grandchildren are in the midst of a baby boom with nine great grandchildren. Three of those are my daughter’s. Those who are not yet married are clearly on the path to becoming so, and most will probably bear children.
Even among the many people I worked with over my career, most were married with children. Families A, B, and C are just not common in my personal experience. Most of our friends and acquaintances have children, and they have been welcoming their own grandchildren into the fold for years now.
Your path has obviously been much different than mine, and I appreciate your soul-bearing description of your own experience. You have a gift of being able to express yourself in a way I can feel it. Thank you. And yes, Daddy is home, but in four years I fear mommy is going to leave him for an alcoholic wife beater who is fabulous in bed. It’s the great circle of life.
Thanks for reading, and for your response. I wonder whether you live in a place where religion holds more sway. It seems that divorce has become a default for when things get rough, rather than seeing the way through, across the country, unless influenced by a church congregation, where the divorced couple would have to navigate a separation within this proxy religious 'family.'
The broken homes, divorces, and children adopted from other countries fill my 'world.' I recall, in the free-wheeling 80s, that most of the women I worked with were utterly miserable because the rules and objectives of dating had been thrown out.
However, if I were to take a survey on how I feel about being childless, it might come out that I'm "happy." I accept my fate; I have made the best of it; I have a lot of freedom. I also spend holidays alone, will miss out on being a grandparent, and so on. What you don't experience, perhaps you don't miss, and I would also suggest that there's a sunk cost fallacy in operation on Reddit, like the people who've destroyed their bodies with 'transgender' surgeries insisting that they are 'happy.' What does 'happy' even mean?
Interestingly enough, I keep running into information that women are less happy, perhaps because when I began to realize that feminism had led me off a cliff, I started reading anything that would confirm that....here's an example. Again -- thank you for reading. I appreciate your response!
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Stevenson_ParadoxDecliningFemaleHappiness_Dec08.pdf
While I was raised in a Christian home, faith wasn’t really a central focus of our lives. I went to church most Sundays, and had years of Sunday school prior to the service. Dad got to stay home, which I didn’t think was fair. Dad used to sing “It Ain’t Necessarily So” from Porgy and Bess. He was also a firm believer in evolution, and taught me the history of creation through that lens. I always felt like I was just talking to myself when I prayed, and it wasn’t until I was in college that I realized I was a true agnostic. I don’t think it was religion that shaped my beliefs on marriage so much as it was the internalization of what I witnessed in my parents and other married couples in our circle. I did like what our religion had to say about marriage, and I liked the idea that what God hath joined together let no man put asunder, regardless of whether there was truly a God or not.
I don’t recall seeing a lot of divorces around me growing up. I didn’t know a lot of peers with divorced parents. We lived in small towns, and perhaps divorce is less prevalent in a small town than it is in urban areas. Maybe a big part of the magic is dumb luck. How did I wind up married to a woman who seems such a perfect complement to me? Why is our bond so strong? Why do we still enjoy each other’s company after all these decades? Whatever it is, it isn’t the church per se as we don't attend one. But I can't deny that our early exposure to religious principles had some influence.
You are right that we tend to search for information that confirms our biases. I’m as guilty of that as the next person. I was looking to confirm my belief that women who were never married and had children are not as happy as those who are married and did, and what I found was that the story is complicated. I have no idea if I would have been happier had my wife and I never had children. We certainly would have lived a life of plenty. All I know is that right now I am extremely happy and have no regrets, and I look forward to sailing into incontinence and senescence with my best friend and the love of my life. I have very much enjoyed our conversation, so thank you for responding!
Indeed, "Daddy’s home"
Yes. I found myself voting, in essence, for the restoration of masculinity. I work in a female-dominated area (academia) where hysteria and neuroticism are driving forces, and worse, beliefs in things that simply aren't true. I'm working on the next installment, an analogy found in a 1962 film on how men need to lead us out of this civilizational disaster.
How lovely that would be, to greet family with joy.
We seem to have come of age at a similar time and within families exhibiting similar dynamics! I'm a retired academic with two grown children. And yes, I came from a family that leaned Left, and I was propagandized toward two children.
Likewise, I've been reflecting on how feminism shaped the choices I made, and I especially appreciate your clarity and honesty! --would love to get your response to my first attempt at grappling with this, one that centers on my big feet, lol.
Thanks for reading, and for your comment. It's good to hear that you had children in spite of the messaging. As a lower tier academic (I teach English Language, with much time devoted to grading essays) I have often wondered how I would have had any time for family around how much of my time work has consumed -- and just getting by.
I'm happy to respond to your first attempt -- keep me posted.